Tuesday, May 08, 2007
"Concealed" Carry Permits?
Did you know that something over 300,000 Tennessee residents are licensed to carry a concealed weapon?
Neither did I. But that's how big the Tennessee Department of Safety database is... and, thanks to a Nashville newspaper, we can now see a listing of all of them -- by name and community.
As seen today on Instapundit:
Indeed.THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN has published a list of CCW permit holders.
SayUncle is contacting their advertisers to complain.
This isn't the first time this has happened. In March 2007, Christian Trejbal, writing for the Roanoke Times, published a list of concealed-carry weapons permits in Virginia. (The list was later taken down.)
And now, no doubt with that debacle in mind, the Nashville Tennessean has published a searchable database of Tennessee gun owners with valid CCW permits -- with no editorial-writer's name on it, apparently. As SayUncle points out, this amounts to a "steal me" list. Anyone who wants to steal firearms from law-abiding citizens now knows where to look. Worse, we can look up who is not on the list -- and who therefore might make for a more tempting target.
Do I really need to explain why this is a singularly bad idea? The whole purpose of concealed-carry permits is for someone to be able to carry a concealed weapon. Perhaps you don't like the idea that your neighbor might carry a gun without telling you about it -- but that's your problem. If your state's laws permit your neighbor to do it, then she's obeying the law. If you want to try to change the law, go ahead -- but subverting a law because you don't like it is unacceptable.
(So what do you do if you really are afraid of guns, and feel that you need to know if your neighbor has them or not? Ask! I've never yet known a gun-owner to lie about it.)
On a purely practical level, concealed-carry means that a criminal doesn't know who is armed and who isn't. This raises the risk factor considerably -- for the criminals! If a criminal knows that a certain percentage of the population is likely to be armed, this means that a mugging carries with it a certain risk of being shot at (and at point-blank range); contrariwise, criminals need not fear armed citizens in so-called "gun free zones". (Are you listening, Virginia Tech?)
And, as has been pointed out repeatedly, having people licensed to carry-concealed makes the community safer, including the neighbors who want nothing to do with guns. Because the criminals don't know where the guns are, they are at risk from being shot at by anyone, and they will act accordingly. Once criminals have a good idea where the guns are, this advantage disappears.
Making such a list public, it seems to me, is the action of someone who fears his law-abiding gun-owning neighbors more than he fears armed criminals. And that's not only misplaced (and irrational) fear, it's also extremely immoral... because it penalizes people who are trying to obey the law (by going to the trouble to obtain a valid permit), while not penalizing law-breakers at all.
Oh, and a comment for the Tennessean: do you really want such a large constituency of potential readers as enemies? Armed enemies, I might add?
If Prof. Glenn's posting on the subject seems a bit terse, there's a good reason for it. I looked, and -- yep -- there he is: Glenn Harlan Reynolds, of Knoxville TN. I'm sure he did not appreciate being outed.
UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. The list has been taken down.
Prof. Glenn has quite a few comments:
ANDREW SULLIVAN ASKS: "If gun rights are civil rights, why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one?"I'm surprised that Andrew Sullivan, of all people, would make such an argument. It's easily extended to a subject near and dear to his heart, after all. Why would anyone object to a statewide list of homosexuals, complete with names and addresses? It's not something to hide, is it?I think the short answer is that gun rights are about security, and we'd rather keep the criminals guessing. In addition, doubt about who owns guns generates what economists call "positive externalities," meaning that if a substantial proportion of homeowners have guns, or if a nontrivial number of people out-and-about are carrying concealed guns, potential burglars or assailants have to allow for the possibility that a victim or someone in the neighborhood might be armed. That produces a deterrent effect that benefits even those who do not possess guns This is why, for example, we see fewer burglaries of occupied homes in the United States than in countries like Britain with strict gun controls -- breaking into an occupied home is dangerous. Meanwhile, on a more personal level, those who are armed would prefer to have the advantage of surprise. I should also note that there's a difference between owning guns (the "keep and bear" business) and carrying guns, which is what the whole CCW permit thing is about. That distinction is explained at some length here.
But I'll turn the question around: If abortion is a civil right, why would anyone object to having a newspaper publish a searchable database of people who've had one?
I'm not ashamed! But some people might worry about prejudice from the "unenlightened and unsophisticated."
Answer: publicly revealing personal details about someone, which they had until then explicitly kept hidden, is in extremely poor taste, at best. Doing it en masse doesn't make it any better.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Dean Barnett on Torture
Dean Barnett, once known primarily for Soxblog and now a regular guest-blogger at HughHewitt.com, has published a folksy FAQ on the subject of "torture", a topic that's gotten a lot of press lately.
I read it with interest... and found very little to disagree with:
Let me say what I do support: When it comes to high value targets in the war on terror, wannabe evil-doers who possess or might possess important information, I support any measures necessary to extract that information.Indeed.
It seems to me that there are two primary kinds of objections to this that we hear these days. One: aren't you afraid that such evil techniques might be used against American citizens, for trivial reasons or no reasons whatsoever? (Yes, I do worry about that. But I worry more about terrorists with immediate plans to kill large numbers of people. It's a long-standing dilemma for intelligence personnel, and it comes up a lot more often than you might think: you have a captive, and he knows something about an attack that hasn't happened yet. He doesn't want to talk about it -- but if he can be persuaded to talk, a great many lives may be saved. Given that the captive is, at minimum, a terror sympathizer and abetter, if not an actual perpetrator, I don't have many qualms about getting him to talk -- particularly if it can be done without inflicting serious damage. More on that in a minute.)
The second objection to this sort of thing rests on what the guys at Power Line have been calling "terrorist's rights". And, as I indicated above, I'm not a big fan of terrorist's rights. Terrorists, remember, are the people who assert the "right" to blow up airliners full of people; who hide in civilian populations, callously risking civilian casualties so that their victims can be made to feel guilty for fighting back; who boast about violating every rule of civilized behavior known. And yet, when they are arrested or detained, they scream loudly about the violation of their civil liberties -- or get others to scream loudly on their behalf.
No, I don't like torture; who does? But I believe there are things worse than torture... and sometimes, a person has to make a choice, and take responsibility for the consequences of that choice.
I don't want hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands, to die in a terrorist attack, when we could have prevented it using information within our grasp. On the other hand, I also don't want our troops to torture prisoners routinely; or, perhaps more importantly, I don't want our troops -- or anyone! -- to be immune from the consequences of what they do.
Labels: ethics, military matters, torture
Friday, September 22, 2006
On Standing Up For One's Country
"Hugo Chavez abused the privilege that he had speaking at the U.N. In doing so, in the manner which he characterized the president, he demeaned himself and he demeaned Venezuela. Hugo Chavez fancies himself as a modern day Simon Bolivar, but all he is an everyday thug."Thank you, Nancy Pelosi.
"You do not come into my country, my congressional district, and you do not condemn my president. If there is any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans, whether they voted for him or not. I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or any other president, do not come to the United States and think because we have problems with our president that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our Chief of State."Thank you, Charlie Rangel.
"Let me put it this way, I can understand the frustration, ah, and the anger of certain people around the world because of George Bush's policies... We tend to forget that a few days after 9-1-1 thousands, thousands of Iranians marched in a candlelight procession in Teheran in support of the United States. Every Muslim country was basically on our side. Just think, in five years, President Bush has squandered all that."Thanks for nothing, Tom Harkin.
UPDATE: Hmm, maybe that's why Sen. Harkin was so eager to defend Hugo Chavez. Chavez, after all, devoted a fair bit of his UN speech praising Noam Chomsky -- who happens to look amazingly like Harkin...
In all seriousness, perhaps Sen. Harkin has had reason to regret his remarks -- or, at any rate, the inappropriate timing of them. Today he says:
“Yesterday’s comments by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela were incendiary and unworthy of a nation’s leader. While I understand the frustrations of many in the international community because of George W. Bush’s policies, I do not believe that gives them the right to come to our country and personally insult and attack the President of the United States. This is especially inappropriate at a forum such as the United Nations, dedicated to civil and peaceful dialogue among nations.”I like that a lot better. Still, it's a pity when people need to be reminded of such things.
There are many reasons that, as we used to say, "politics ends at the water's edge" -- that we will criticize our people as seems appropriate to us, but that we'll close ranks and defend our own against outsiders. It's the right thing to do ethically and pragmatically, for one; and it establishes rules of polite conduct, which others hold us to in other countries, and which we have every right to expect of them in ours.
As Robert Heinlein once pointed out, morality is exemplified by a mother cat who dies to protect her kittens. The lives of her children are more important to her than her own life; or, to put it another way, the survival of her family is more important than her own personal survival. That's what moral behavior boils down to, at its most basic -- helping to ensure the survival of something bigger than yourself.
Human beings can do more than that. We can reach for a higher level of morality, in which a person is ready to die to protect others he or she doesn't even know; that's what firefighters do. And there's a higher level than that, involving loyalty to one's state, or one's country -- being ready to die to protect more people than one could ever possibly meet. (That's called 'patriotism'; it's a word that has fallen out of favor lately. But it means helping to ensure the survival of your entire country. It means that there are people willing to save my life, and even to die to protect me, simply because I'm an American. That's a powerful thing.)
And one aspect of that sort of loyalty is knowing when to criticize your own, and when to present a united front. (Does a mother criticize her children when they misbehave? Of course she does. But she'll still protect them against others, and will probably refuse to stand for criticism of her children by other parents.)
Besides, as Sen. Harkin seems to have forgotten, showing loyalty to your own country -- and treating it as more important than "understanding" some other country -- is helpful in winning elections.
As for this clown:
"The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.No comment necessary... except to say that, by comparison, he makes Ahmadinejad seem almost sane and reasonable, something I didn't think was possible.
And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world."
UPDATE II: Many in the blogosphere have castigated Rep. Pelosi and Rep. Rangel, pointing out that their own standard rhetoric is not all that different from what Chavez said.
That's true enough. But I don't care. Certainly, I've given them a hard time myself, when I thought they deserved it. Contrariwise, it is proper for me to praise them when I think their actions are praiseworthy, as I believe these are.
When it comes to deranged Democrats, I'd much rather reserve my ire for idiocies such as this:
That's Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, former governor of Vermont and former Presidential candidate -- and he's dancing while wearing a Fatah khaffiyeh, the style worn by Yasser Arafat when he was out killing Israelis (and Americans). The political blindness implicit in that photo is well-nigh unbelievable.
(Later -- Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly also calls Dean out on "know[ing] your audience", albeit with respect to a different issue.)
Follow the link for more speculations on Democrats and Jews. Powerline has more, as does Ed Lasky at The American Thinker. It's getting scary out there.
Labels: ethics, patriotism, U.S. politics, Venezuela
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
What's That About The Geneva Conventions, Again?
I just found this, courtesy of Instapundit:
Exactly what protections are our troops being provided by the Geneva Convention? No enemy we've ever fought or are fighting has abided by it. So, in real world terms, the Geneva Convention provides no protection for our troops whatsoever. If we completely withdrew from the Geneva Convention tomorrow, it would have no impact at all on how our troops are treated.Indeed. (Admittedly, this has been on my mind lately; I had a call in yesterday morning to the Mike Gallagher show, on my way to work, to argue with him about the Geneva Conventions and terrorists. I never got on the air; I was still on hold when I got to the office and had to hang up.)
Granted, the Geneva Convention could be of use in the unlikely event that we were to get into a war with Belgium, Italy, Spain or some other Western European nation. However, isn't the argument we're hearing from Europeans and American liberals that we should treat the terrorists we've captured by the rules of the Geneva Convention (as a matter of fact, better than the rules require) despite the fact that they haven't signed onto the treaty? Since that's the case, why wouldn't the same rules apply to any signatories of the treaty that we fought with? Even if, theoretically, we were doing something as evil as kicking their captured soldiers into industrial paper shredders for fun, shouldn't they give our soldiers every benefit the Geneva Convention requires?
What's that, you say? If we don't do it for their soldiers, why should we expect them to treat our troops with respect? Great! Now why doesn't that apply to our troops and Al-Qaeda? If Al-Qaeda is torturing and murdering our troops, why should we treat their captured prisoners as well as, say, American soldiers that are thrown into the brig? Why should we treat some terrorist from Saudi Arabia who wants to kill American citizens like he's a uniformed soldier who follows the rules of war or worse yet, like he has the same constitutional rights as an American citizen?
On a practical level, I disagree with the notion that withdrawing our support from the Geneva Conventions will have no effect on how our troops are treated. At this point in time, the enemies American troops face -- those enemies being terrorists who wear no uniforms, and claim to be bound by no ethical restrictions whatsoever -- seem to think that the Geneva Conventions protect terrorists, and thus embolden them. I think there's a fair chance that, were America to withdraw from the Conventions, it would be taken as a signal that American troops are taking off the kid gloves... and we might indeed see differences on the battlefield.
(Please don't tell me that, if American troops became more brutal, the terrorists would do likewise. There's no need to recount the grisly stories of what the terrorists have already done, with no trace of regret, while we've worked ourselves into a frenzy debating "water-boarding" and the like. If there's any measure of brutality that the terrorists have not yet tried, it's not because they've been holding back; it's because they haven't thought of it yet.)
Not that I'm advocating a withdrawal from the Conventions, mind you. I believe strongly in the need to fight an ethical fight -- not for our enemy's sake, but for ours. I also believe that it's possible to achieve victory at too high a price.
But extending the protection of the Geneva Conventions to terrorists is, at best, naive and ridiculous. The Conventions clearly apply to combatants in uniform, adhering to specific rules; they therefore do not apply, and were not intended to apply, to terrorists.
(This is not new, by the way. Terrorism was not invented on 9/11. The authors of the Geneva Conventions knew all about terrorism, and about guerilla warfare; they knew what they were doing when they excluded terrorists from the protections of the Conventions. That's what I had hoped to explain to Mr. Gallagher.)
As Bill Whittle pointed out, the soldier wears a uniform because it makes him a target -- and so that the civilian standing nearby will not be a target. Terrorists, refusing to wear uniforms and insisting on blending in with local populations, deliberately forego that protection for the civilians they supposedly are fighting for. They have not earned the right to be treated the same as soldiers, who protect civilians with their own lives.
So why do so many people insist on treating captured terrorists by the most humane standards the international community knows? Personally, I see it as wishful thinking -- if we treat a terrorist, until recently cowering behind his human shields, as though he was a soldier (and a protector of civilians), then perhaps he will become so. Even better, perhaps we will persuade his comrades, still on the battlefield, to behave more humanely than they do now.
It's a pleasant thought. The odds are against it, though, as far as human nature goes. The historical record doesn't back it up either -- what was that President Bush was saying, about the number of Guanatanamo Bay captives who were released, on insufficient evidence, and who have already found their way back to the battlefield?
It's pleasant to think that terrorists can be turned into lovers of peace, simply by treating them nicely. But we have no evidence whatsoever to back up that theory, and considerable evidence in the opposite direction. Believing in this sweet theory just because it's pleasant to do so, at a time when lives are at risk on the battlefield, is a luxury we cannot afford.
Labels: ethics, military matters
